More Than a Test Score

Alright I need to get my first blog up here. I’ve been getting teased by my bro Mick, so here we go, I’m blogging.

For reals though, I just wanted to share my experience on choosing the scholarship winners. It was so awesome to see the caliber of high school students out there. I suck compared to you guys. Seriously. As we went through student after student, profile after profile, day after day it just got harder and harder. We started looking at the profiles for the scholarships on the 1st of June. 25 days later we were still going crazy cause we had so many students that had more than a test score to show. Those 25 days were spent checking and double checking no one slipped through the cracks. We wanted the students that won to embody what Zinch is all about—being more than just a test score. We spent many late nights and weekends trying to get the scholarships out by the 15th. We realized quickly that it wasn’t going to be a reality. There was no way we could choose someone that fast.

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Thanks for being so patient. We appreciate it. It’s now about 5:00am Chicago time, but just before midnight Hawaii time….which means we have kept our word. We are delivering the scholarship winners on the 27th of June.

Like I mentioned in the other blog….the competition was FIERCE! Please don’t feel bad if you weren’t selected. It was an extremely tough process. During the following weeks, we’ll be doing stories on these winners. Stay tuned!!!! Also, just a reminder, we have two scholarships still running: Sweet-diggity-dawg Scholarship ($20,000) and the Student Government Scholarship ($1,000). Be sure to apply for those.

Thanks again for being so patient. Also, we added some 4th and 5th place General prizes because there were just soooo many awesome students who were qualified. Also, remember, our theme is “I am more than a test score.” We definitely kept that in mind as we selected these individuals.

K. Time to go get some sleep. We have a huge FBLA conference to get to in a couple hours. Peacers. And for all you who stayed up all night with us…..you are awesome! We apologize for keeping you up so late. Zinch.com rocks! Pass it on. Here are the scholarship winners for this round of scholarships.

1st place for the Zinch.com General Scholarship – $5,000
Kerry Anne Morrison, Convent Of The Sacred Heart (Greenwich, Connecticut)

2nd place for the Zinch.com General Scholarship – $2,500
Garland A Castañeda, Fred C Beyer High School (Modesto, California)

3rd place for the Zinch.com General Scholarship – $1,000
Bonnue J. Kavoussi, Saint Mary’s Hall (San Antonio, Texas)

4th place for the Zinch.com General Scholarship (2 people tied)- $500 each
Andrew James Hiller, Fortuna Union High School (Fortuna, California)
Kevin Blute, Harwich High School (Harwich, Massachussetts)

5th place for the Zinch.com General Scholarship (3 people tied)- $500 each
Fiona Foster, Bisbee High School (Bisbee, Arizona)
Eric Antonio Arevalo, Damien High School (La Verne, California)
Patrick Ryan Johnson, Peoria Notre Dame High School (Peoria, Illinois)

Zinch.com California Scholarship – $1,000
Kelsey Christina Jimerson, Westchester High School (Los Angeles, California)

Zinch.com Utah Scholarship – $1,000
Rui Ma, West High School (Salt Lake City, Utah)

Zinch.com Texas Scholarship – $1,000
Jaclyn Le, Nimitz High School (Irving, Texas)

Zinch.com Florida Scholarship – $1,000
Elizabeth Galbut, The Community School of Naples (Naples, FL)

Zinch.com New York Scholarship – $1,000
Gideon Emmanuel Mausner, Irvington High School (Irvington, New York)

This is gonna be short and sweet. We just got off an airplane in Chicago (looking through remaining profiles during the entire flight) and we’re now at an IHOP with our laptops connected to the ceiling outlets….finalizing the scholarship process. We’re down to a couple dozen people…..aaaaggggggghhhhhh! We might as well just put ‘em all up on the wall and throw darts. They all deserve it.

We’re in town for the national FBLA conference….unfortunately we were traveling during the same day that scholarship winners are announced. It’s 10:42pm here. Rest assured though, we are definitely posting the winners tonight!

In the meantime, feel free to check out one of our recent productions. A couple weeks ago, Brad put together some sick rhymes. Click on the link to check out our official theme song. You won’t be disappointed. Hopefully this can hold you off for a few hours.

Mick

I know I know….a bunch of you have been checking our blog every other minute…to see if the winners have been announced. Sorry charlie. This post still won’t announce it. However, we’re posting the winners today, the 27th, as promised. So stay tuned

Just to let you all know, it’s almost 3:00am right now…and Brad and I were just texting each other back and forth encouraging each other to keep pushing….keep working……keep evaluating the remaining profiles……thinking it through and pondering it out to make sure the best decisions are made. I can probably guess Sid is doing it right now too on the other side of town. We are taking this very seriously.

For awhile it involved the entire Zinch team, sifting through student profiles and keeping students moving forward. But now it’s coming down to the buzzer. We’re down to the remaining percentages….and Brad, Sid and I have the nearly-impossible task of choosing the winners. We’ve been spending hours upon hours, late nights upon late nights, red bulls upon red bulls, reading through all your profiles making sure we do this right. I’m telling ya….this is extremely tough! There are so many qualified and deserving students. So many have such incredible talents, skills and stories. The competition is fierce. Very fierce.

So…..I guess my point is that I hope no one feels bad if they don’t win. At the point we are at now….so many people could win. It’s kinda like college admissions. There are so many qualified students who can fill one spot. Unfortunately, sometimes there’s only one spot.

You guys rock. So does Zinch. Pass it on. :) Later today we’ll post the winners. Peace.

This is Part 2 of the All-Star Series. Recently, USA Today came out with their annual All-Academic team, showcasing 20 of the most talented and accomplished high school seniors in America. I was able to catch up with a bunch of them, interviewing them about their high school accomplishments, asking about their college admissions experiences, and begging them to share some of their nuggets of wisdom with y'all. Read my introduction post.

Quick facts: Jason just graduated from Fox Chapel Area High in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He will be attending Harvard in the fall. He graduated with a 4.0 GPA (unweighted out of 4.0).

Accomplishments:He is the first high school student to have solo photography exhibitions in the main gallery of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Studio and in Carnegie Mellon's Hewlett Gallery of Art; president and founder of Thespian Society; directs, produces and acts in numerous high school productions, including lead role at Pittsburgh City Theater; wrote one-act performed at high school; Senior Outreach Society president and founder; physics club co-president; forensics club president and state semi-finalist in improptu speaking; wrote two novels and had poetry published in high school and city literary magazines.

Jason, you seem to do it all. How on earth do you do it? You seem super busy with all your extracurriculars, yet still do amazing in school. Share with us your knowledge and advice.
Surprisingly, I found that, yes, I was busy, but not super busy. Mostly I just found things that I loved to do, things that I was passionate about, like theater and art: they always say "if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." This definitely holds true for me; I never felt that I was constrained by my extracurriculars, or that I was not having fun. Most of my friends were part of the extracurriculars that I participated in, so I sort of "killed two birds with one stone" by participating in activities that I loved, while having fun with my friends. Also, I was never big on watching hours of TV or talking on AIM or anything like that. On occasion, I would spend maybe an hour online, and every night I watched about a half hour of TV to catch up on the news, but I just felt like it was such a waste to drain your time with TV and AIM.

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